3 Big Moves: Knowing Your Numbers, Identify Problems & Opportunities, and When To Expand

Hey, my friends, it's Luis Massaro. And welcome to a Three Big Moves edition of the Moving Mastery Podcast.

In these Three Big Moves episodes, I'll be sharing with you three big moves that you can do in your business, things you could apply to to start seeing instant results if you really want to get to that next level. Because there's really a certain set of principles and some foundation and things that really everyone that's trying to succeed to higher levels of success needs to be implementing. So these are things that either I did in my business to help me reach the level I did of success in the moving business or things that I struggled with and overcame. Also my coaching clients and members of our programs of what they're struggling with and how we help overcome those. And sometimes we'll even have listener questions as well, like we do today. And we will be covering today. Knowing your numbers, how that's the single most important thing you can do in your business if you're serious about reaching the next level, identifying problems and opportunities, how looking right under the hood of your current location of where you could find additional money, how you can take advantage of additional opportunities and resolve problems there. And then we're going to cover when to expand, when to grow your business, when to open up additional locations, when to get into long distance, if that's what you want to do, or commercial work, if that's what you want to do, and when it's right. That's going to come from a listener question on Lewis. When should I expand? When should I open up more locations in other cities? That's all in this week's episode of the Three Big Moves.

Part one. Knowing your numbers. Knowing your numbers is by far the most important thing you can do in your business if you really want to succeed at higher levels. And let me just start by saying that that wasn't something I always practiced or necessarily believed in. You know, when I started my business, it was, you know, I ran it based on how much money was in the bank account, right? It was like, hey, if we paid all the bills and there was still some money left over, we were doing good, right? And that's how I ran it for a lot of years. And, and I know that that's how a lot of people today are running it. So I want to assure you that whatever level you're at, there are people with major companies, multi locations, doing millions and millions of dollars that don't know their numbers.

So you may say, Louis, well, then why do I need to know my numbers if people can succeed without knowing their numbers. And the answer is you're restricting yourself. You're, you're restricting your potential. You know, for me, I was able to grow my companies. I opened multiple locations. And it wasn't until I hit the recession, it wasn't until 2008 came, I had six offices, we were doing about 10, 11 million already. And the recession came and really, you know, kind of knocked me off my horse, if you will. And around that same time was when the yellow Pages, you know, didn't. Weren't really working as well for the money we were paying. And all these years prior, my CPA was saying, you know, you need to be reviewing your profit and loss. And to me, I didn't get it. You know, it was just some report that you gave to the accountant to do your taxes every year. It wasn't something that I thought I needed to run my business. And it was hard to tell me anything because I was making money early on. And I'm really grateful for the time that things were tight. You know, I had to scramble. I had to figure out what was going on. It wasn't just flowing because years earlier, even though I didn't know my numbers, and we're going to talk about exactly what that means in a minute, the businesses were producing enough money to cover up the inefficiencies. So let me say that again. I was making enough money in the businesses. And you might be as well right now too. You might say, well, I'm making money. But if you don't know your numbers, that money is just helping you to cover up the inefficiencies that you can discover and then become more profitable in your business. So it's not just about being more profitable in your business. It's about being able to run your business, to be able to work on your business like a CEO and not just day to day be worried about what's going on. I mean, you know, constantly checking the online banking to see, you know, how much money is in the bank. That's, that's not how you want to run your business. And if that's how you're doing it now and you're listening to this, I know that you have it in you that you want to reach higher levels of success, you want to make more money. And I'm just here to tell you that there's some simple practices that you could put in place. They are going to give you the clarity you need to grow your business. Because if we don't have clarity, where are we going? Right. If you're driving down the road and all of a sudden there's a rainstorm and you don't have windshield wipers, you're gonna have a problem, right? You're not gonna be in good shape. So you know, when you're leading your company, you're the captain of the ship, you're out in the ocean in this big ship, and you need to make sure you're directing it in the right direction. And knowing your numbers is what's going to allow you to do that. So for me, that's one of the number one things that needs to happen from the start, right? So if you're listening to this, it doesn't matter if you're just starting out. Tell yourself the number one rule is I need to know my numbers. If you've been in business 20 years and you've been doing good.

But you're looking for ways to do better, right? I mean, you want to make more money, chances are there's a lot of money right under your feet. But you need to be able to have the clarity to see what's there to see where you have opportunities for growth in your current location with your current employees and your current manpower and your current equipment, and where there are problems. And I want to start by talking about the first report that you should definitely be looking at on a monthly basis. And that's your profit and loss statement. Okay. You know, any accounting software will be able to produce this for you. I like QuickBooks Online. I think it's easy to use. It integrates with a lot of, a lot of programs. And.

It'S first about getting it configured, right. You need to make sure that you have all of your income going in there. You need to make sure you have all of your expenses going in there so that you can track it. Because your profit and loss statement is essentially, it gives you your income. Right? Let's imagine the report, a one page report, okay? And then for those of you who know this, I promise you, you're going to learn something here. So just hear me out. The top of the report, you have your income, which you're going to want broken out by local long distance storage. Any different line of revenue that you have, you're going to want to break that out. All right? So every dollar that comes in, you have a report on which, which line of business brought it in, right? Then you have your cost of goods sold. So everything you sell is essentially moves. What are the costs for those? So you have your mover payroll, you've got Boxes and materials, you know, merchant fees, fuel, tolls, etc.

Then after that, and that, once you take your income minus your cost of goods, that will give you your gross profit. Okay, your gross profit. And then you have your expenses. So you're going to have things like, you know, a lot of people will put the cost of goods and expenses in different categories, but you'll have, you know, maybe your monthly software expense or your rent expense or.

You know, marketing, you know, that'll all be under your expenses. And then after you subtract all that, you'll have your net income. And that's what this is all about. It's the net income. You know, we talk about.

You know, how much money we want to do in our business and what level, you know, how much we want to do per year. And it's really about how much money do you want to make for you and any other owners in the business? If you have a partner, what's the net? Right, right. What, after the money comes in the top, what's left at the bottom? So if you've been in this position, like I have to, where you're like, hey, we made a lot of money last month. We made a lot of money the month before, but where is it? All right, why don't I have it? I don't understand why all this money was coming in, but yet there's no money in the account. All the answers will be in your profit and loss statement. But what we do is, you know, we essentially are fooling ourselves without even knowing it, thinking that we can manage this all in our heads, that we can keep track of it all. Like, oh, I know my business. I know what's coming in. I have an idea what's in the account. I know what the expenses are each month. But something very powerful happens when you put it on a piece of paper and you put it in front of you and you start drilling down into each one of those expenses. It can tell you a lot about your business, you know, everything that you know after a certain point. Once I discovered that I needed to know my financials.

I made it a practice every single month, you know, to go through it, first of all, make sure everything in there is correct. Right. If I had a bookkeeper doing it, I made sure everything was categorized correctly. And then I sat and I analyzed that report. I looked at, you know, what areas of opportunity are there, you know, what. What areas of concern are there. Right. I started looking at, you know, for example, I bet you may have heard me talk about before where, you know, I would look at the P and L and I'd see we had a big claims expense, right? I'm like, okay, well, why is that so high? Let me start drilling down into that. And I'd see all the checks that were written for claims or, you know, repairs. And I'm like, okay, well, I need to drill down into this further. And I drill down into the claims report, right? Which would be a separate report. But when you get to a level where you can kind of see what's going on from a high level, from just that one P and L, that's gonna give you the power that you need to run your business with certainty, with clarity, with confidence, right? No longer with the worry, the stress, the what ifs. You're gonna be able to have all the information that you need right there, right? Month after month, you'll start to know, hey, what we pay about X percent in fuel for all the moves that we do. X percent is paid in fuel or X percent is paid for labor. And when those numbers are off one month, you're going to be able to identify that immediately. Immediately. So I can't stress this enough how important it is to know these numbers. And I'm sharing this from a place of not knowing them for a long time to finally knowing them. And it's hard to explain the shift that happens unless you've been there, unless you've gone from, like, being in the dark, thinking that you really know what's going on in your business, but you really don't, to having the utmost clarity about what's really going on in your business and be able to direct it in the way that it needs to go. I. I wish I could explain better how.

It'S just such a relief, right? You know, all the answers that you're looking for, all of a sudden, they're there. So, you know, that's where you need to start. You need to get your profit and loss statement, and you need to get it on point. I can tell you this.

You're going to need to start getting your data correct, right? So in order to get your profit and loss correct, you need to make sure that it's all getting entered in somewhere into accounting software and your income's in there correctly. All your expenses are categorized correctly, right? And it's going to take you a little bit of time. If you haven't been keeping up on it, if you haven't been.

You know, if you don't have a bookkeeper that's going in there and doing that stuff, it's going to take a little bit of time to get it figured out, but you know what? It's worth it. Start chipping away at it. Put, put an hour a week, two hours a week, whatever you could block off on your calendar to sit and work on this. If you have a bookkeeper, you know, explain that you need to get this on point. You're going to start reviewing it every month. The best thing you could do is go sit with your CPA or your accountant or whoever handles your taxes, talk to them. That's, you know, that's how I learned my P and L. Not only did I was I paying them to do my taxes and my accounting, I said, listen, I want you to teach me how, how to read, how to understand this profit and loss statement so that I know it right? There's other reports too. You have your balance statement, you know, you have your cash flow report, but your balance sheet, your cash flow report, but you want to start with the profit and loss statement. And don't get discouraged if you, if it seems like a lot of work, you know, this isn't a, it's, if this is something you haven't been doing. It's not a like one day project. It's gonna take you a little time to get it done. But you need to start chipping away at it. You need to start chipping away at it. I mean, it's crucial. Crucial. I'm telling you right now, I wanna hear from anybody that has gone through this, anybody that's gone from not knowing their numbers to finally knowing their numbers, hit me up, you know, send me a message. All my social media isaro. And I want to hear about it. And I want to hear about it. If you listen to this and then you went ahead and made the shift and you made the change, because you know what? You just unleashed amazing potential for yourself. And that's how you lay it out to get to that next level. So the second report that you need to look at on a monthly basis is your marketing ROI report.

What's a marketing ROI report? Well, your profit and loss statement will tell you how much you spent on marketing, but your marketing ROI report is going to drill down and break out how much each one of the lead sources that you're spending money on, right? So if you're buying leads, if you're doing pay per click, doing SEO, you know, direct mail, whatever you're doing Yelp, Angie's List, HomeAdvisor, whatever it is, every single one of those needs to have its own line on the report. And you need to see the profitability for each one of those sources. Okay? This is the SEC. So as soon as I learned my P. Ls, right, as soon as I saw the power of knowing my numbers, I realized that the thing that was going to allow me to really scale was marketing and profitable marketing, right? Because if we sit around and we just wait on repeat and referral business and we have a desire to grow, you're gonna need to have a lot of patience for that, right? I'm all about getting more repeat and referral business. But if your intention is to scale, if your intention is to grow, you need to spend money on marketing. And if you're spending money on marketing, you need to know how each one of those individual lead sources is performing, right? Not just as a whole marketing all together, but each individual one. I mean, if you had a stock portfolio, if you were buying stocks, you wouldn't want to just know your percentage of ROI on the whole portfolio. You'd want to be able to know each stock, right? So that you can cut out the weak links, put more money in the ones that are making you money. And that's the same thing with your marketing roi. You want to be able. You need to be able to track all your marketing, because marketing becomes very simple after that. Once you know your numbers, all you have to do after that is test, track and tweak. That's it, right? You test stuff out, you track it to see if it's working, and you tweak it and you make an adjustment. That's it, right? The mystery of marketing goes away when you know your numbers. These two reports right here.

I'm looking for the right words to tell you how much this will change your business, how much this will change the direction of the future for you, your business, your family, your financial security, everything. So if you've been struggling, if you've been, you know, stressed out, feeling like, I don't know my numbers, I don't know if we could afford this. I don't know if we could afford that. I don't know if I should buy that next truck. I don't know if I should sign up for this marketing source. I don't know if I should hire this person because I don't know if we could afford it or all of this stuff will be cleared up and be clear as day for you. When you know your numbers and you have reports in front of you, that's what you're going to need to get to that Next level. Now, of course, there's other reports, too, but these two are the main two, right? Start with these. Get these under control. Once you have those, everything else will start to open itself up for what you need. Because once you become a numbers person. And by the way, you. You don't become a numbers person because you like math, right? I didn't become a numbers person because I liked math. I became a numbers person because I realized the truth of my business was in the numbers.

Part 2. Identify problems and opportunities. You know, the thing you really need and the thing you want is a solid foundation for your company, right? You want to be able to look under your feet right now at your current office, your current setup, your current employees, your current equipment, your trucks, what you have now, and identify where are the problems, what areas of concern are there, and what opportunities do I have right now? You know, a lot of people think about opportunities as, you know, oh, I have a friend and he wants to open up a location in another city, and I could open up and go partners with him. I'm talking about opportunities right now with whatever your current business model is. So if you have, you know, if you're working out of a truck rental yard and that's your current model, what opportunities do you have and what problems are there in front of you now to deal with? If you have five, six, 10 locations, you know, 20, 30 locations, and that's your current business structure, what problems are there that can be solved and what opportunities are there that can be taken advantage of, that's what you want to look at, okay? A lot of times we start looking beyond our current, you know, beyond where we are now. We look, you know, we're looking out, you know, out into the green pastures and thinking that the problems, you know, the answers to all our problems are out there, and we're going to be able to go out and, you know, expand or get into a different line or try this. You know, if I do local moves now, I'm going to get in the long distance. If I do long distance, I'm going to get in the commercial, right? And we think that that's going to kind of solve our appetite for growth and our, you know, desire to make more money. And most times it's not the case. Most times there's a lot of money right under your feet, right where you are now, right where you could take the same infrastructure, the same people, same trucks, same office and make more money, right? I mean, that's. That's really, you know, what it's all about you want to be able to service your customers and do a great job and you want to be compensated for it. Right? So in your current office, what, what opportunities do you have to improve to increase profits? Where the opportunities there now? Right. I want you to, you know, block out this idea of expanding to another location for a minute. We're going to talk about that in part three. But I want you to just think about where you are now in your current setup now. Where are the opportunities, you know, what can be tightened up there now? You know, maybe you can establish, you know, a real sales process. You know, maybe right now you just kind of are winging it and, you know, calls come in, you know, you give some quotes, you know, you do a good job because, you know, you might be good on the phones or you might be good on site doing an estimate, but maybe there's no follow up, maybe there's no consistency, maybe there's no, you know, structure to be able to, you know, train and teach somebody else that could come in and help you, you know, to relieve you or to add to your team. Maybe that structure and that process isn't there. I mean, that's a huge opportunity. You know, as you know, I have moving sales academy. That's part of. That's all it's about is sales process and developing that process. Because I believe that that's such a huge part for moving companies to be able to have that consistent flow of business. Right. Do you have a sales script? You know, if not, that's an area that's an opportunity to sit down and write out a sales script. To be able to have all your people consistently saying whatever it is works, whatever works for you. Who's your best salesperson? What are they saying to people? Write that down on a sheet of paper and pass it around to everybody and get everybody to say that. Right. I'm a big believer in sales scripts. And you know, if it's something you don't have, that's another opportunity for you right now. How about upselling? You know, you put in a lot of work to get your customers the marketing, the repeat and referral business. What else can you sell them that they're also in need of when they're moving, Right. What else? I mean, think about it. What other services could you provide? Could you, could you do some cleaning? Right. Some painting? Right. What other services can you upsell? Packing.

Sell them boxes, even if they don't want packing. How could you incorporate that into your sales process to be able to make more money Per customer. Right. A lot of times we're always looking for more customers. More customers, More customers. When you could take the customers you have, provide them more value and make more money. Right. What about, you know, we're talking about opportunities here, and I'm just saying some stuff to spark some ideas in your head. I mean, I don't know your exact business and what opportunities you have in front of you. So I'm hoping that, you know, some of this stuff sparks your own ideas. Right. You know, maybe you create a referral program. Do you have a referral program? Because if you don't have a referral program, you need a referral program. Meaning do you have an organized, systematic way to get people out there, you know, realtors, mortgage brokers, apartment complexes, home builders, storage units. Do you have a way to get them all to refer you business to where you keep track of it? You're on top of it. You nurture that program, you compensate them for the referrals. That's an opportunity right under your feet that you could be working on. Right. We talked about profit and loss statements and marketing ROI reports in part one.

Your marketing roi, that's a huge opportunity because if you start tracking your marketing, you're now able to open up additional lines of marketing sources. You can go out there and spend some money on marketing with the total confidence that, hey, I'm gonna know right away if this is working or not working. I don't have to worry about it. I don't have to wait for my sales reps to say, hey, these leads work, or hey, these leads don't work, or, you know, try to think about how I feel about it. Right. Intuition's great, but you don't want to try to run your business off intuition completely. So, you know, that's another opportunity. Right. Get your numbers on point and be able to look for different marketing sources. So I'm sharing these, these examples here because I want you to start thinking about what opportunities do I have to improve and increase profits. Right? Because sometimes you don't see certain things as just, you know, maybe you don't think like customer service, for example, is tied to the profits. It is, it is. Everything you do in your business all comes down to the profits. The better you run your company, the more efficiently you run your company and effectively you run your company, the more profitable it should be. Right? So, you know, make a list, sit down, and on a sheet of paper write, you know, problems or problem. Yeah, problems and opportunities. And now for problems. You know what problems can be Resolved. That will either bring more money into the business or will plug the holes to keep us from losing money. Right. There's a lot of areas. There's so many moving parts in the moving business. Right. I mean, it's. It's. There just is, you know. Right. I mean, the. You have to lead comes in, then there's sales, and you have to follow up on the sale. Then you have to do an estimate, make sure the estimate's right. Then dispatch has to get the information. Then they have to make sure they have the right equipment to send the movers out there. The movers have to go. They have to actually move the stuff without breaking anything and making the customer happy. Then after the fact, there's customer service surveys, not to mention storage, not to mention all the administrative work and the accounting and the bookkeeping. There's a lot of moving parts, and in those moving parts, there's a lot of cracks.

And there's a lot of room for money to fall between the cracks. Right? Because when it comes in the top, right, if we go back and we think about our profit and loss statement, the income comes in the top, right. Then you have your cost of goods, then you have all your expenses.

By tightening up and sealing those cracks and plugging the holes, you're allowing for more money to come out of the bottom. Right. So what problems can be resolved? You know, do you have an issue with, you know, in the last episode, if you didn't. If you didn't listen to it, you know, I was talking about, you know, crews that, you know, working off the clock and clocking them in, clocking them out from the office, that's huge. That's a huge opportunity to plug some holes. Right. And it's one of those things that if it's not something that you're intentional about and not something that you think about and something that you're passive about, you're just losing money and you're putting in a lot of hard work and not really keeping enough of what comes in the top.

What problems or what areas of concern can be tightened up that are going to allow you to make more money. So clocking the movers in and out from the office, keeping track of where they are, making sure they're not working off the clock, making sure that if you're charging an hourly rate that, you know, customers paying for the time that they're there to you, the company, and not to, you know, the movers or not to nobody, and, you know, knowing where your equipment is, too. Right. Equipment management Think about all the dollies that get lost, all the pads that get lost. That's a huge, huge hole that if you're not intentionally, you know, conscious of it and make a, you know, a diligent effort to say, you know what, we're going to stop. We're going to stop losing equipment. I'm going to stop buying equipment every month because, you know, not because we're losing it. The only reason you should be buying equipment is when you're growing, right? You need to equip a new truck. Great. Right? You're taking on more storage. You need some more, you know, pads, great. But not because you're losing it. Right? It's one thing to run a business. It's one thing to have a shiny facade and, oh, we have beautiful trucks. Oh, we have beautiful ads. Oh, my, you know, my pay per click is up on the first page. All that's great. But if you're losing all the money on the back end, what's it all for? Right? And, you know, these are things that don't necessarily get fixed overnight, right? But if you identify them, that's what we're doing here. We're identifying problems and we're identifying opportunities. Right? And it takes, you know, it takes sitting down and writing it out. I'm a big believer in writing stuff out. You know, if you. Once you get it on pen, once you get it, you know, on paper with a pen or pencil or whatever, you'd be amazed, the stuff that comes out of your head. But when you try to figure it all out in your mind, we're just not capable of collecting and gathering and organizing that much information. To come up with a good answer in our head, we need to get it out of our head on paper. And that's what you're doing here. You're going to write down identifying problems and opportunities, you know, customer satisfaction, you know, that's. Is it a problem? Right? Do you have areas where you can improve that?

Are all your customers happy? I know you're not going to make them all happy, right? But are all your reasonable, sane customers, are they happy? Right. Are you doing everything you can? Are you responding to inquiries quick enough? Do you need to develop your customer service process? When we first start in the business, we kind of deal with any issues that come up. As the owner or as a manager, we just kind of deal with what's there. But once you get to a certain level, you have to put some form and put some structure into your customer service and how you're going to Deal with any and every issue that a customer may have, because they might not have a big issue, but the interactions they have with your company can decide whether they use you again, whether they, you know, tell another, you know, friend or relative or somebody else about you. It'll determine the review that they give you. Just because someone doesn't give you a bad review doesn't mean it's a success, right? Why not wow your customer? Why not make them a raving fan? Do you have any opportunities right now? Do you have things you could do, ways you can tighten up? Just your normal interactions, just your confirmation process, just if a customer calls with a question, just if, you know, being able to explain packing better to them, whatever it may be, are there areas that you can tighten that up and improve.

That will make your customer a raving fan? This is what it's all about. Identify the problems, identify the opportunities, and that's your list. Prioritize it, and go to work. Start chipping away at making that stuff better, and focus on building the foundation under your feet, right where you are in the current business model that you're at. And once you're there, you could expand in any which direction you want to go.

Part three when to expand.

So this comes in as a listener question. This comes in from Nick. What's up, Nick? And he wants to know, when am I ready to expand? When do I know the time is right to open up additional locations?

And this is, like, one of the most important, determining moments for anybody in business to make this decision. And I know, like, everybody wants to grow, everybody wants to expand. It's the entrepreneurial, you know, spirit, right? It's. It's like what we do, it's right. It's in our blood, it's in our soul. Like, we want to grow and we want to keep growing. And, you know, most of us will do that until we hit a ceiling, until we feel like we can't, you know, we can't grow.

And I can tell you from experience that growth is not always good. You know, growth does not equal profit. And, you know, I say that because, you know, for me, when I expanded originally, right when I started my first company, I was, you know, 19. You know the story. I. And by 22, I opened 23, 23, I opened six offices, six locations. I mean, warehouses, storage trucks, the whole deal. I opened my call center at that point, within a year after that. And I can tell you that I expanded prematurely. And I don't want to want to see anybody have to go through the Life that I had to live for a few years to backtrack and put it all together once I already took the step and once I already took the leap, right? But that was, you know, that was me being young, right? That was, you know, lack of experience, lack of guidance, and the feeling of, like, you know what? I could do it if I'm making X amount of dollars here in this location. Wow. Imagine If I opened five locations or six or 10 or 20. Right? I'm sure you've done the math, but it's a whole different ball game to run one location successfully than it is to run multiple locations successfully. So you'll hear me talk a lot about systems and processes and having your standard operating procedures and writing. And that really comes from me expanding prematurely, right? I mean, I had my office in Denver and it was rocking. I mean, we were doing awesome. So I'm like, oh, I could open more locations. And that's what I started to do. And, you know, some went well. I had really good people there running them. You know, I opened up my first office with a partner that went there and ran that office, my first additional location. And, you know, I got lucky with him, right? I mean, I showed him how to do things. Right. I taught him the business. I gave him the blueprint essentially, of what to do, how we did it, and he went, implemented. I got really lucky. But in other locations, I didn't get as lucky. And we all want to overlook reality sometimes, and we just want to hope for the best. And something I heard once that really stuck with me is that you need to face the brutal reality of what's in front of you, but still remain faithful, still remain, have the hope and the dreams that you could do it. But first you have to face the facts of what's in front of you. You can't just assume that everything will fall into place later.

Because for me, I opened my next office again. I had a partner who went there and he ran it. That was the setup. Found that partner stealing, ended up having to kick that partner out. And now I had an office that was unmanned.

Then I had one other office that ended up unmanned. So now I'm kind of, like, scrambling. I'm putting people in these places, and all the while it's taken attention away from my main core business, the business that, you know, like we talked about in Section two, which is identify problems and opportunities, right? If I stayed there and I identified problems and opportunities, I could have grown it even more. Not to say I wouldn't have expanded later. But I shouldn't have expanded until I knew how to run additional locations with my numbers. Right? Because I could tell you if you're going to open additional location, you need to know your numbers. You need to be able to run your business off your numbers, and you need to have systems and processes in writing so that location does things exactly how you do things. So if you don't have things in writing now, get them in writing now. And by the way, like, I'm all for expansion. I'm all for growth. I'm all for, you know, opening more offices. But I don't want to see you do it too early when you're not ready with the wrong foundation. Right. Doesn't take anything away from you as an individual. Right. You might be the most remarkable, you know, business person around. And it just takes time to develop and do things in the proper order. Right? So, you know, if you want to expand, here's what I would say. So, you know, Nick, you sent in the question here. Here's what I would say to you. First thing is, is there room for improvement in your current location? Right.

Can you identify problems and can you identify opportunities in your current location that you could handle? Now, right? Before you go outside, before you spread yourself thin, let's get the foundation that you stand on strong, okay? That's number one. Number two.

Can your current business run without you? So, you know, we have this kind of, like, illusion in our mind that we're just gonna, you know, have somebody. You know, I hear it all the time. All the time. And this was me, too. So I'm not just giving you guys a hard time. I'm. This was me, you know, I did it. Oh, I have a guy, you know, he'd be really good, and he's looking for an opportunity, and he wants to, you know, open up an office in this city or in that city. And, you know, it could be good. Well, first of all, when you're successful in what you do and other people see that, of course people are going to come and want to participate in that. Right? But there's more to it, and you need to make sure that you do it when you're ready to do it, not because somebody out there presents themselves and says, hey, I'll run an office for you. You know, because what we do, right, what we do automatically is we're like, oh, wow, look at this. This is an opportunity. I could just send this guy there. He'll run everything. He'll send me the money. It'll be great, right? I Mean, that's. But you know what? It doesn't happen like that very often, Right? You know, for me, it was like. For me, it was like one in six. It happened, right? So the odds aren't really there that that person's gonna be the person that you think they're gonna be to run that business. So when I say, can your current business run without you?

It's facing the brutal reality of, you know what? I'm gonna need to go put attention on this new business. I can't just send somebody there and hope and pray that they do a good job the same way that I would just shoot dice down a craps table, you know, hoping to hit my number. It's. You need to know, going into it, that you're going to need to spend time in that new office at the very minimum, to get it off the ground, up and running some momentum, make sure everything's in place. If something, you know, happens to fail or if a person doesn't make it or you need to go there, your current business needs to be able to run without you, right? You need to be working on your current business, not in it, before you decide to open up and expand another office. All right? Otherwise, you're just spreading yourself way too thin. Third thing would be, you know, is it. Is this my intention right now? Is this the smart thing to do for my business? Or am I just trying to, you know, stroke my ego or impress other people or keep up with someone else that I know that might be opening multiple locations? You know, maybe you have a friend that, I don't know has a restaurant. He's opening up 20 pizza shops, and you're like, man. And he's posting it all over Facebook and Instagram, and you're like, you know, makes you feel like you want to grow and you want to expand. Just remember.

Growth does not always equal money. And a lot of times, it'll actually take money away from you when you spread yourself out too thin. That's number one. Number two is don't always believe what you see on Facebook and Instagram and everybody else that's bragging about their successes. And I'm saying this because it's something that I know everybody deals with, and.

You don't want to make some move to try to keep up with people when it's not your time to make the move. Because what will happen is you might start off early, right? You might come out of the race hot, like, you know, in front of everybody. But if it's not built on a Strong foundation, it'll either crumble or like me, it's going to take a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of plane rides, a lot of car rides, a lot of back and forth. No life, trying to rein it all in. And you don't want that. So don't open another location just to be able to say, hey, I open, I own multiple moving companies. Would you rather be able to say, I own multiple moving companies or would you rather have a fat bank account? Right. More locations does not equal more dollars. It only equals more dollars. When your first foundation is. When your first foundation location has a solid foundation and then you duplicate that, right?

Then you need to ask yourself, like, am I willing to gamble my current location on the success of the new location? What do I mean by that? You know, when you open another location, when you open an office, like really open an office, right? So if you're going to open a new location, you should really open a new location, right? I mean, whatever you had to do to start your current business, that's what you had to do. I mean, I worked out of a truck rental yard with two rental trucks, and that was it. That's how I built it up. But when I went and opened up additional locations, I went and got a lease, I got a warehouse, I got trucks. I did it the right way. And when you do that, right, I mean, what I'm trying to say is you do what you need to do to start, but when it comes time to expand, you should be in a position to do it the right way. Okay? And when you go out and you get this warehouse and you get these trucks and you set up marketing and set up certain accounts that you're going to need just for insurance purposes, you know, probably to insure it, you're going to need to sign with your current company, right? You're going to need to sign with your current company as a guarantor. You know, don't sign personally. You're going to need to sign with your current company. So you're basically gambling the success of your current company on the new company, that the new company is going to make it. So you just need to think that through. Because there's more at risk than the new company, right?

And if you have all those checked and you're like, yeah, I'm there, I'm ready. You just need to ask yourself, are you all in? Are you all in this venture or are you just rolling the dice? Are you just trying to see what happens? Because let me tell you something. If you're successful in your business.

You know that the reason you got there is because you put your focus on it, you put your attention on it, you put your work on it. You made that thing successful. It didn't just happen by chance. Okay? And that same work ethic, that same determination, right? That same hunger to succeed, if you don't have that with the new location, if you're not really all in, meaning, if you're not like, hey, this, I'm opening up this office, and it's going to work. If I need to go there for three months and get this thing set up, it's going to work. If I need to keep putting some money in until I, you know, get over that hump and that, you know, that. That initial, you know, phase where I'm going to have to spend a bunch of money before I'm making a bunch of money, I'm still. I'm all in. Because if you're not all in and you're not there to personally feel in control, you're going to hit a roadblock, you're going to hit a bump, and you're going to second guess yourself, and. And you're gonna wonder if you should close it. You're gonna wonder what you should do with it. The person that you have there might back out. If you're not all in, don't do it. But if you're all in, if you're like, hey, Louis, I get it. Enough, enough. I don't want to hear it. I'm in. Then go expand, right?

And this doesn't have to be just like opening another location. I'm answering Nick's question here. Who wanted to know when the right time is to open another location? But this is the same thing for, hey, we're a local moving company. We want to get into long distance. Or, hey, we do local and long distance. We're a van line agent. But now we really want to start getting into commercial moves, right? Or you know what? I have a moving company in my current city, and I want to open up a painting company. I want to open up a cleaning company, I want to open up a restaurant. It doesn't matter what it is. The point is that your current foundation needs to be strong. And once your current foundation is strong, you unleash a world of possibilities. You can do what you want, you can grow how you want, and it could be done in a structured way where you're not only making money, but you're enjoying yourself. You're not only profiting in your Business, you're thriving in your life. Remember, the money is right under your feet. The money is where you stand. Go and get all of that. Tighten everything up there. Then expand. Go do it. Grow right. And make sure you hit me up. LewisMissaro I want to hear about it. I want to hear about your growth plans. I want to hear about your successes. I want to hear about, you know, if you're stumbling, whatever the case may be. Send in your listener questions. I'll be able to answer them next time. Until I see you guys, until I talk to you guys next time. Go out there every single day. Profit in your business, thrive in your life. Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you soon.

All right, my friend, that's it for this week's episode of three Big Moves. If you're looking to make some big moves in your business, you definitely need to check out my Moving Mastery monthly training program. This is where I do a live broadcast broadcast training every single month for our members on increasing profits and running a smoother running moving company. Everything from the latest marketing and what's working today for moving companies to the systems and processes for running a smoother and more profitable business. I'm live with you every single month taking your questions and coaching you to the next level. And right now you can get the last three months of the program for just $1. That's $300 worth of training for a $1 trial when you try out our moving Mastery monthly program program because I want you to get in there and I want you to see the quality of training so you get those three trainings unlocked right away. Then every single month we go live where I do a live Q and A and coaching. Plus you'll get all the recordings in your members area to watch at any time. That's live training, Q and A and coaching with me every single month plus all the recordings in your members area and you get all that for just 97 bucks a month. You'll get a brand new training every single month on things like marketing, sales, operations and dispatch, finance, leadership, all specifically for your moving business. All that every single month in your members area. LewisMassaro.com.

Monthly that's Louis L O U I S Massaro M A S s a r o.com forward slash that's a dollar trial and it's a limited time only. So I'm not sure when you're listening to this. So if you go there and it's gone, I apologize because there's hundreds of students in there right now and this is your opportunity to join them and take your moving company to the next level. LewisMassaro.com monthly I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'd really love to know what you guys are thinking about this particular episode. Do me a favor, jump on itunes real quick and leave me a review about this episode. I look at my Apple podcast reviews to get an idea what you guys are thinking, what you're liking, what you're not liking. So please go there and leave me a review. It really helps more people to discover the podcast and really shows engagement in the community and lets me know what you're thinking. I'd love to know what you're thinking and be able to interact with you. And I do that through Apple Podcast reviews and also through Instagram. So hit me up. TheMovingMasteryPodcast I'd love to see where you're listening to this right now, what device you're listening on, and what you learned from this particular episode. So take a screenshot of you listening to this right now. Drop me a message on Instagram. TheMovingMasteryPodcast I'm always giving shout outs to those that are listening and returning direct messages to those that are listening. So make sure you show me you're listening to the Moving Mastery Podcast. It really helps me keep this thing going and not feel like I'm just sitting here talking to myself. So thanks so much for being a part of this one. Thank you. Until next week, go out there every single day. Profit in your business and thrive in your life.